Nick Shinn's Modern Suite Type Series comprises the Figgins Sans and Scotch Modern font families in OpenType Pro format (OTF), a masterfully detailed set of revivals which include multiple stylistic sets and numeral forms. The Modern Suite OpenType Pro fonts support Western and CE encodings, Cyrillic (with Bulgarian alternates) and Polytonic Greek. There are many special features, including small caps, unicase, italic swash capitals, ten sets of figures per font, and both slashed and nut (vertical) fractions.

More…The first sans serif types were made in London in the early 19th century. They were severely modern, all caps and bold. The Figgins foundry, inventor of the term sans serif, showed a ﬁne example in its specimen of 1836. The extra bold weight of Figgins Sans is a close revival of the original, with the addition of a lower case which retains its partly geometric, partly grotesque quality. The family is rounded out with other weights and an italic, and extended into Cyrillic and Greek, all executed in what is assumed to be as authentic a manner as possible, given the hypothetical nature of the exercise.

To meet the burgeoning demands of commerce, type founders in 1830s London introduced a plethora of new fonts which abandoned the traditional nib-informed model. Most radical were bold, capital-only designs with almost no stroke contrast, stripped bare of serifs. To all intents and purposes these minimal expressions of utility were identical to 20th century functionalism. Recontextualizing one of the original sans fonts, Shinn offers an alternative proposition to the conventional myth of modernism.

Scotch Modern is Shinn's revival of the typeface used in the book New York State Cabinet of Natural History. This beautiful genre of type, so popular in books, magazines and advertisements during the Victorian era and much of the 20th century, was derided by advocates of both the Arts & Crafts movement and 20th century modernists, and has never been properly adapted to hot metal, phototype, or digital media... until now.

The full Modern Suite collection (13 fonts) also includes 4 Scotch Micro font styles which are slightly heavier, have larger x heights and shorter descenders.

Most fonts on the site are available to download as soon as your transaction is completed. You will receive a link to download the font to your desktop.

Offline font delivery via email:

Fonts from certain suppliers, e.g. Berthold and Font Bureau, are not available to download automatically; your order will be emailed to you free of charge, normally within half an hour of the transaction being completed. Please note that our office hours are 9am to 6pm Mon-Fri, UK time. Offline orders received after this time will be processed on the next working day.